The Subscriber Identity Module or SIM is a familiar component in the world of mobile telephony. Standard SIM cards are essentially small smart-cards: like most smart-cards, they comprise a module—an integrated circuit connected to a contact plate—embedded into a plastic substrate. The standard, ISO 7810, ID-1 card is more or less rectangular, with a width 85.6 mm and a height of 54 mm, whereas the standard, ISO 7810, ID-000 format, used for SIM cards is an irregular shape, though still clearly based on a rectangle, with a width of 25 mm and a height of 15 mm. This, much smaller card, is often referred to as a plug-in card, or a SIM plug. The larger ID-1 format used for smart cards facilitates insertion and removal of the card in and out of a card reader, something that may need to be done thousands of times during the lifetime of a typical smart card. A plug-in card, by contrast, is designed to be small, even if this means it is a little awkward to plug in or remove, because plugging in and removal are relatively infrequent operations. A recent addition to the family of miniature, plug-in cards for mobile telephones, is the so called Mini-UICC card or plug, this format, defined by ETSI, measures 15 mm in width, with a height of 12 mm.
By far the majority of plug-in cards are made by embedding a module into a standard, ID-1 sized, card body, and then punching a break-out slot, with the standard ID-000 card format, or the Mini-UICC format, around the module. The advantage of this approach is that it allows manufacturers to use standard, smart-card machine-tools for manufacturing and handling plug-in cards. And, while the plug-in card remains attached to its ID-1 card, it is easy for both the manufacturer and for the end user to handle. The principal disadvantage of this approach is that the plug-in card only represents a small proportion, about 10%, of the total area of an ID-1 card. Thus, when the plug-in card is broken out of the ID-1 card, 90% of the plastic is waste. The problem of waste is addressed by the European patent No. EP0495216, which describes an ID-1 format card with two break-out microchip cards, without describing the manufacturing procedure. The waste problem is also addressed by European patent, no. EP1073010, which describes an ID-1 format card with four break-out microchip cards, this patent also describes a manufacturing procedure. Both of these approaches reduce waste, but in cases where the two or four plug-in cards are destined for two or four different customers, the fulfilment and packaging process is complicated by the need to break out and handle the plug-in cards separately during the fulfilment and packaging process. What is needed is a way of putting, for example, at least two break-out plug-in cards onto an ID-1 card, that would allow the plug-in cards to be distributed to different customers without the additional cost and inconvenience of handling, and repackaging a 25 mm by 15 mm, or 15 mm by 12 mm component.